In the recent media stories about the first world war, the two sides in conflict were the British and their allies, fighting the Germans. Increasingly, in stories about the second world war, however, the word “German” is disappearing, and “the Nazis” are the people Britain and its allies were fighting. This is a worrying political correctness. We were fighting the Germans in the second world war and a number of them were members of the Nazi party. The concentration camps that killed six million Jews had staff that were members of the Nazi party of German nationality but also a large number of people who were simply German nationals.
Your report on the Queen’s visit to Bergen-Belsen (27 June) contained the sentence: “This was the Queen’s fifth visit to Germany but her first to a former Nazi concentration camp.” The headline was “Queen visits Belsen, where the world awoke to Nazi evil”. The idea of separating Germany from the Nazis is an extremely worrying development and everybody who cares about the holocaust, and historical accuracy, ought to be objecting to this interpretation.
Matthew Evans
House of Lords
